Category: Cold War

This, given by a man who nine months before had been shot and seriously wounded by a would-be assassin. Yet, his faith in America and her people, and in the blessings of God and liberty, remained so strong. A man who had been wounded by a gunman, it might be noted, but who never called for disarmament of the law-abiding, or the infringement by the government against the People’s right to keep and bear arms as a last redress against the tyranny of that government.

Thirty-four years is a long time, it would seem. I mourn the loss of that America, and the President who led it.

In the November 2015 issue of USNI Proceedings magazine, retired VADM Douglas Crowder asserted that retired Flag and General Officers should refrain from engaging in the political process , “stay on the sidelines, and away from public endorsements” of candidates in a general election. In his “Hear This”, Crowder seems to believe the genesis of such activity was Admiral William Crowe’s endorsement of Bill Clinton. In reality, however, such activities on the part of retired Generals and Admirals, including their entry into the political process as national candidates, goes back to the founding of our Republic. There has never been a Constitutional prohibition on retired GOFOs participating in the political process, up to and including using the titles of rank that they have earned in the expression of their views and opinions.

For some reason, we are suddenly hearing that such Constitutionally-protected free speech is now “dangerous”, that it could lead to a “politicization” of the Armed Forces. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the senior Officer on the active list, intimated such when he called that free speech “unhelpful”, and later scolded retired GOFOs for exercising their rights. Apparently he missed the irony of an active agent of the US Government engaging in behavior that has a “chilling effect” on free speech, conduct expressly forbidden as a violation of the very Constitution which Dempsey swore an oath to support and defend. Indeed, Dempsey’s immoderate and despicable conduct illustrates the two things very wrong with VADM Crowder’s admonitions. The first is that there is virtually no complaint or outcry when a GOFO goes on record, either in print or the visual media, expressing support for the far-left agenda. As an example, the gay and lesbian retired GOFOs who openly advocated repeal of DADT were described as being “courageous”, some were even lauded at Obama’s State of the Union addresses. So how is it that, when contrary to the agenda of the far-left, such political expression becomes dangerous? It can’t be. Unless there is a double standard when it comes to Constitutional liberties. Heaven forfend. And, here is where the cognitive dissonance begins. In this month’s Proceedings, Navy Commander Michael Wisecup cautions us on such dangers of retired GOFOs:

“…think of the implications to our profession if a political party could endorse and groom select active-duty (O)fficers into greater positions of authority in order to advocate for their platform.”

Which brings us to the far more disturbing issue that is wrong with VADM Crowder’s (and CDR Wisecup’s) assertions. They have little to do with the true danger, the increasing trend of active-duty Officers carrying the political water for their masters. Warning of the dangers of the lawful free expression assiduously ignores damage being done by the increasingly-politicized GOFO ranks at the top of our Armed Forces under Barack Obama. Advocate for political platforms? Are you kidding me? Such instances are impossible to miss.

Martin Dempsey’s admonition against lawful free expression was not limited to simply criticism of retired GOFOs who are private citizens. No, General Dempsey, while in the execution of his duties as an active duty Military Officer, admonished a PRIVATE CITIZEN to desist from lawful free expression that the General found disagreeable. Dempsey should have been relieved of his duties. Had he had such objections to retired GOFOs speaking out in support of the far-left agenda of his political master, he would have been relieved had he not kept his mouth shut.

Admiral Mike Mullen’s shameful charade in front of Congress, when he offered, unprompted, his personal views on repeal of DADT, and proceeded to inform the US Military that any disagreement with them would be considered lack of integrity. Such arrogance and poor judgment also should have been met with censure, but instead Mullen was declared a hero for advancing the political agenda of the far left. That he lost any remaining respect from many of those he was charged with leading mattered little to him. Mullen did, however, admonish Army MajGen Mixon for advising his soldiers to utilize their Constitutional rights in addressing their Congressional representatives.

Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations, also pushed incessantly for the codified racial and sexual discrimination known as “diversity”, instead of ensuring the United States Navy was organized, trained, and equipped to fight a war at sea. The Navy, following his tenure as CNO, is woefully unprepared for such an eventuality. However, it seemed far more important to Roughead that the Navy “looked like America”, selecting and promoting its leaders on criteria other than merit and suitability. Race and gender (and sexual preference) have replaced competence and performance. The mess Roughead made will take a decade to clean up, if it even can be.

In the midst of a sabre-rattling North Korea, with its rapidly increasing ballistic missile capability and nuclear weapons development, and a PLA Navy becoming ever more aggressive and capable, openly hostile to US interests and that of our allies in the Pacific Rim, COMUSPACOM Admiral Sam Locklear declared that the biggest security threat facing his forces was……. global warming.

As part of the debacle of being relieved for cause as COMUSFOR-A, (ironically, because he and his Officers were highly critical of political leadership) Army General Stanley McChrystal let it be known he had voted for Barack Obama. Revealing whom one voted for while speaking as an active duty Officer was once considered a serious taboo. In fact, I don’t know if I can recall any senior Officer acknowledging such quite so publicly. To the surprise of nobody, as soon as he retired, McCrystal went on to rail about his support for gun control and other leftist agenda items. Nary a peep of protest from Dempsey.

Advocating for political platforms, indeed. Yes, it is sometimes a tricky course to navigate, to follow the orders of the President as Commander in Chief, without being an active agent in his advancing a domestic political agenda. But that is why much is expected (or had been, at least) of the professionalism and judgment of senior Officers. Admiral William Leahy, despite his personal bent toward Republican conservatism, was able to serve his President, New-Dealer Franklin Roosevelt, loyally and superbly throughout the Second World War. As did Dwight Eisenhower, who would become the Republican nominee in 1952. There seem to be an ever-shrinking number of GOFOs in the higher ranks of our military with the character and willingness to do so.

The increasing politicization of the senior leadership of the Armed Forces of the United States means such egregious political pandering and subversion of our Constitution will increase, not decrease. Yet, people like VADM Crowder and CDR Wisecup seem to think it is the RETIRED GOFOs that pose the danger to seeing our Armed Forces become yet another government weapon to be used against political opposition instead of fighting and winning our nation’s wars against America’s enemies. I find that quite concerning. Once again, just like we are told after yet another act of Islamist terrorism that law-abiding Americans are to blame for exercising their Constitutional liberties under the Second Amendment, it is actually the GOFO retirees who are the problem, not the invertebrate political lap-dogs on active duty doing the bidding of the left, and that those retirees should refrain from exercising their Constitutional liberties under the First Amendment. Each of those assertions requires the embracing of a dangerous double standard. And each requires a generous helping of cognitive dissonance. A disturbing trend, to be sure.

This kid, my nephew, will never admit to being a communist, it’s always this “moderate independent” crap. But his Facebook feed is full of Bernie Sandinista, if you know what I mean, and he recently tweeted some gibberish about riding the bus in Czechoslovakia and identifying as a “human being” instead of what he is, an American. He’s been a “student” at some Ivy League circle jerk for the better part of a decade. I think he’s 29, who the hell even cares? If he’s the future, this country’s digging its own grave and I’m glad I won’t be there when it finally kicks the bucket. When I was his age, I was flying Ranger battalions into Grenada in ’83. I spent Thanksgiving there, and believe me, we didn’t have any damn printouts. We had a war, son…

He’s gonna be all like “you’re just giving ISIS what they want.” I’ll come back at him with something like: “You know, you raise an interesting point there, Brayden. I’ll tell you what, why don’t you invite one of your ISIS pals around the house and we’ll see how much he likes it when I slash his guts out with the turkey knife. You think that’s what he wants? They want us to crush them? Tell me something, how did you feel when your Little League team got mercy-ruled by those country boys in the district finals? Is that what you wanted? Were you just phoning it in for the “participant” trophy?

…When’s the last time you got a blister on those hands? Don’t mention the time you tried eating the vegan hotdog at the WNBA game you made me take you to out of “fairness.” You didn’t even watch the game. You just tweeted about sexism on your iPad. You know, that little computer screen made by Apple, which last I checked was a corporation, Mr. Occupy.

I can understand how he feels. My brother’s oldest, lovely girl that she is, hasn’t seen much of the world outside the upscale Boston suburb she resides in, or a fully-funded semester abroad in Italy. So she is fairly convinced that all the progressive feminist bullsh*t she was taught in college is gospel truth. Because as soon as the discussion involves facts, interest wanes. Thankfully, her other uncle makes me look like a McGovern Democrat. 🙂

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you are just as groggy and stuffed as I am!

Somewhat belatedly. Born Eric Arthur Blair, in India, on June 25th, 1903.

It is hardly the man’s fault that his seminal work, written as a chilling dystopian warning regarding the destruction of liberty, has become an instruction manual for the far-Left “Liberal” Secular-Progressive Statists who now hold the levers of power in our once-great Republic.

USS Thresher, among the most modern nuclear submarines in the world at the time, was lost on the morning of April 10th, 1963 off the New England coast, fifty-two years ago tomorrow. No matter how many times I read about it, it makes the hair on my neck stand up. This piece from Navy Times in 2013 is a haunting read.

The Thresher collapse event signal was detected by multiple SOSUS arrays as an extremely high-amplitude event at ranges as great as 1,300 nautical miles. The characteristics of that acoustic event confirmed that the Thresher’s pressure hull collapsed or “imploded” at 09:18:24 at a depth of about 2,400 feet (i.e., more than 400 feet below her predicted collapse depth).

The Thresher’s pressure hull and all sea-connected piping systems had survived well beyond their design specifications. The analysis of the SOSUS detection of the collapse event — the bubble-pulse frequency — also indicated that the pressure hull and all internal compartments were destroyed in about one-tenth of a second, significantly less than the minimum time required for perception of the event by the men on board.

Measurements made during the instrumented sinking of the discarded diesel-electric submarine Sterlet in 1969 are consistent with the conclusion that the water-ram produced by the initial breaching of the Thresher’s pressure hull at 2,400 feet entered the pressure hull with a velocity of about 2,600 mph. That force would have ripped asunder the pressure hull longitudinally and vertically, as verified by photographs of the Thresher wreckage.

The collapse of the bulkheads in the 280-foot SSN occurred in less than a tenth of a second. One hundred twenty-nine souls died in service to our country. Vigilance and preparedness to fight and win our nation’s wars has a price well beyond dollars.

One of the Lexicans tipped me to this, from the National Museum of Naval Aviation.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=215564371791027&permPage=1

Douglas’ A3D (later A-3) Skywarrior was the largest plane ever operationally deployed aboard carriers. Earlier attempts by the Navy to field a nuclear capable bomber at sea were… marginal at best. Some P2V (later P-2) Neptunes were intended to be launched as nuclear bombers, but no attempt was made at providing a capability of recovering them aboard. The later North American AJ (later A-2) Savage was a hybrid propulsion bomber, with twin reciprocating engines, and a small jet engine embedded in the tail. It was not a terribly successful aircraft.

About the time the A3D started entering into squadron service in significant numbers, advances in nuclear weapons reduced their size to the p0int where smaller tactical aircraft, such as the AD (later A-1) Skyraider and the A4D (later A-4)* could carry nuclear weapons. The widespread adoption of in flight refueling also meant smaller strike aircraft could reach well into the heart of the Soviet Union after launching from the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

The A3D, with its great size and payload capacity soon found itself adapted to roles beyond the nuclear strike mission. Variants would serve as tankers, electronic warfare platforms, reconnaissance jets and even as transport. A-3s did fly a handful of conventional strike missions during the Vietnam war, but rarely ventured into the contested skies above North Vietnam.

The Bethlehem-based news agency Ma’an has cited a Kuwaiti newspaper report Saturday, that US President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

Israel is far from a perfect ally, and they can be a thorn in the side of America even at the best of times. But they are the only western-style free democracy in the Middle East. They are also a valuable friend. Conversely, Iran is an oppressive theocracy that has promised the destruction not only of Israel but of the United States, as well. They are a destabilizing force in a strategic region, hostile to American interests and to those of our allies.

That Obama chose to heed the advice of the National Security Advisor of a pathetic weakling of a President speaks volumes (though Obama makes Jimmy Carter look like Bismarck). That he chose to make such a strong threat against an ally rather than our myriad Islamic fundamentalist enemies is positively thunderous. Obama hates American power and influence, just as he does that of Israel and the UK. He is an Islamist sympathizer and a statist communist, just as Rudy Giuliani had the courage to say publicly. Obama is positively hot for a deal with Iran that would cede to them the ability to develop nuclear weapons, which they have promised to use against Israel.

The notion that the US would threaten an ally who wanted to strike Iran would seem preposterous under any other President. I don’t know if it is true now, either, but such a thing is much more plausible with an anti-American, anti-Western communist in the White House.

What would have been the effect if Ronald Reagan had made a similar threat and stifled the Osirak strike? Or George W. Bush had threatened Israel into canceling the attack on Syria’s nuclear facility in 2007?

There are 600+ days left of this malignant cabal of anti-American ultra-liberals in the Executive Branch. One hopes there remains something resembling the United States of America on Inauguration Day, 2017. And that our credibility and relationships with our allies around the world have not been irreparably damaged. On Tuesday I will listen to Benjamin Netanyahu carefully. I hope others do, too.

The FCC voted today to make broadband internet a “public utility”. A quietly terrible tragedy, the effects of which will be disastrous for our liberties. DaveO at Op-For spells it out superbly.

From 1983 until today, February 26, 2015, America had the freest press the world has ever known because of the free (in terms of controls, not necessarily in cost) the internet. Through Obamacare we have seen the government directly attack the free exercise of religion, and today we have lost the last truly free press. Just like Obamacare, the authors and FCC Chairman ramrodded the s through with zero oversight, zero accountability, and a whole lot of lies to the people. The risk of blogs and the internet informing principled opposition to the Tyranocracy was too much to bear. What next? The Second Amendment?

For those of you who actually believed that control of broadband internet by the same Federal Government that used the IRS and Justice Department to persecute political opponents of Barack Obama and the radical Left had anything to do with “net neutrality”, your naïve stupidity in trusting the motives and explanations of this Administration contributed materially to handing control of the last semblance of independent press to the most malignant Presidency in the history of our Republic.

You were warned. But you would rather be willfully blind. And so you shall remain. Let’s hear from an expert on censorship:

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?

-Stalin

Make no mistake, Barack Obama believes precisely the same. And forget not that he counts our nation’s enemies among his friends, and domestic political opposition as his enemies. He is once again employing his regulatory agencies, and his Führer’s Decrees, er, Executive Orders, to make sure we, his enemies, have neither.

…before Jackass Cat finishes it. He is already almost out of catnip. Little doper.

Another excellent Christmas gift from our gracious host. I have been remiss in not posting this earlier. Thanks, XBRAD. Your gift will let me stay warm inside when the wind chill is -30 (like today), or when forced to contemplate our invertebrate Chief Executive, or our eroding liberties, or our lemming-like voter base….

When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified.

…Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.

Nothing screams “scientific validity” like changing recorded results to fit a hypothesis. When the bleeding-heart tree-huggers ask with such self-righteous indignation how we could possibly doubt “climate science”, you would do well to share information such as this with them. And just who is leading the charge to re-write the weather data from yesteryear? Why, it is the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.

Homewood checked a swath of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”. First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken.

GISS Raw DataGISS “Adjusted” Data

And it isn’t just South America. Other “adjustments” have been made on existing and recorded data sets in other areas of the world. Adjustments that is so severe that major climatic events are erased from the records. Iceland faced severe economic impact from extreme cold weather from about 1965 to 1971, with a dramatic drop in agriculture and fishing.

…in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded. This has surprised no one more than Traust Jonsson, who was long in charge of climate research for the Iceland met office (and with whom Homewood has been in touch). Jonsson was amazed to see how the new version completely “disappears” Iceland’s “sea ice years” around 1970, when a period of extreme cooling almost devastated his country’s economy.

So there you have it. According to the Global Warming panic mongers, the rather traumatic times of extreme cold, so indelibly etched on the memories of Icelanders, didn’t really happen. It was instead, insists Global Warming alarmists, merely a recording error.

Note to tree-hugging liberals: When you become outraged at our skepticism about “anthropogenic climate change”, and consider us to be “flat earthers” for not buying into the politically profitable nonsense that is man-caused global warming, try to understand why we think you are brainwashed and lemming-like nincompoops for pledging allegiance to anti-capitalist politicians whose “scientific methods” would not be accepted by a tenth-grade chemistry teacher. The same politically-driven ideological crap “science” was once heaped upon me as a school boy when the dire prediction was of a coming ice age. The solution to which was the same socialist wealth-redistribution malarkey that will now halt the fictitious Global Warming.

Here’s hoping your Prius gets stuck in a snow bank on the coldest day of the year.